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Rochester Jazz Festival and Tiffany’s The Lord’s Supper Mosaic

Tiffany's The Lord's Supper with Drums. Photo by Wayne Stratz, at Rochester Jazz Festival.
Tiffany’s The Lord’s Supper with Drums. Photo by Wayne Stratz, at Rochester Jazz Festival.

After my post about Tiffany’s Dream Garden mosaic, my husband reminded me that we’d seen another Tiffany mosaic, The Lord’s Supper, at the the Rochester International Jazz Festival in 2009. He took a particularly cool picture of it, with a drum kit in front, since Christ Church Episcopal was a venue for the Festival. We were getting ready to listen to Miguel Zenon, saxophonist extraordinaire, and a painting at the front of the sanctuary caught my eye, and then I realized it was a mosaic! And when I went up to get a closer look, I discovered the floor was tiled in Tiffany mosaic as well. I was in heaven.

Tiffany's The Lord's Supper at Christ Episcopal Church, Rochester, NY. Photo by Wayne Stratz.
Tiffany’s The Lord’s Supper at Christ Episcopal Church, Rochester, NY. Photo by Wayne Stratz.
Tiffany Mosaic Floor Christ Church, Rochester, NY. Photo by Wayne Stratz.
Tiffany Mosaic Floor Christ Church, Rochester, NY. Photo by Wayne Stratz.

A blogger friend of Wayne’s has graciously offered to let us stay with them. I find when I sit and listen to jazz, I imagine mosaics, like the music taps into the creative visual part of my mind, and my imagination roams into new ideas. The other cool thing about a Rochester trip, is that there were yarn stores to check out. I became a knitter in 2008, and suddenly I had a new stash of fiber in addition to my stash of glass, and the opportunity to experience color and texture in a different way. On the way to Rochester, in Watkins Glen, is the Finger Lakes Fiber Yarn store. As we drove into town, I was looking for the store, but it was easy to find, since there was a big sign that said “YARN” and what lovely yarn it was.

Not to mention there was Tobes Donut & Bakery next door, and I am nothing if not a fan of donuts.

Related: Clara Driscoll and the Tiffany Girls

Over at Stratoz:

Tiffany Lamps Come to the Reading Museum

The Triangle Shirtwaist Jazz Project: A Way to Back the Arts with Kickstarter

Triangle Trivet by Margaret Almon
Red and Black Pinwheel Mosaic Trivet by Margaret Almon.

Kickstarter has gotten my imagination, with the possibility of helping living artists create their work.  Stratoz and I contributed to The Triangle Shirtwaist Jazz Project, by composer Jim Kuemmerle. As he says in describing his project:

Next March 25th is the 100th anniversary of the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, a horrific tragedy that inspired a wave of governmental and workplace reform.

For this past year, I’ve been composing and arranging a series of instrumental jazz pieces that together honor and reinterpret the story of the Triangle factory. They incorporate influences from traditional East European, Jewish, and Italian folk and sacred music, as well as influences from across the spectrum of jazz.

146 people died in the fire, mostly young immigrant women, because the all the doors were locked at closing time because the owners wanted to search the workers as they left. Ironically, the shirtwaist was an article of clothing that many women found a relief, because it was much more comfortable than corsets and hoop skirts, and in my post about Tiffany glass artist Clara Driscoll, she is shown wearing a shirtwaist blouse.

When I was an undergraduate, I took a class in the history of the labor movement in the United States, and was very moved by the account of this fire, as well as the story of the Lawrence textile workers'(mostly women and girls)strike of 1912, and wrote a series of poems for my MFA in creative writing on women workers.  Triangles have been a favorite motif in my mosaics, especially those from quilt blocks like “Spinning Pinwheel” and “Broken Dishes” and remind me of how quilts were usually the work of women’s hands.

In 2007,  Kuemmerle wrote a composition  entitled “Kolmio,” which means ‘triangle’ in Finnish. This piece was written for a modern dance project at Arizona State University.

An interview with a woman who worked in the Triangle Factory as a girl.

Over at Stratoz’s Blog:

Jazz on Tuesdays:  Labor History with Jim Kuemmerle

 

UPDATE:  Goal was met, and we received our CD and have listened to it with pleasure.  Review of Jim Kuemmerle Triangle Shirtwaist Jazz Project.

Learning by Going Where I Have to Go: The Slow Process of Getting Going

Tower of Mosaic Books
Tower of Mosaic Books.

In 2005, I spent some time with Master Career counselor Damona Sain, as I was feeling restless in my librarian world.  Every inventory I took said art, art, art, and librarian was not coming up, and in fact may have been on the “make me loopy” list.  I was making collages at my dining room table, and loving the world of color and pattern, but I assumed that I wasn’t an “artist”.  But I started listening to the voice that said “you can make art,” and when I discovered mosaic, I knew this was my medium.  The challenge was the kernel of truth in my librarian self, my attraction to research.  I read 20+ books on making mosaics.  The photo of the tower of books only represents books I own, not the ones I checked out of the library!

I read until I thought I would burst if I didn’t make a mosaic soon, but I was still in a holding pattern, wondering if I should read one more book.  This limbo was an uncomfortable place, as I searched for everything on “doing” but remained in my head.  Making the leap was the scariest part, but once I landed, I was on holy ground, feeling truly like myself.  I loved the poem The Waking by Theodore Roethke when I was in high school, which captures the paradox of learning by going where we have to go:

Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.

Aptly, my first step was making pebble mosaic stepping stones, for the house Stratoz and I had just bought.  I was in heaven, sorting pebbles, seeing the subtle gradations of color.

 

Pebble Mosaic in Progress
Pebble Mosaic in Progress. Photo by Wayne Stratz.
Pebble Mosaic Stepping Stones by Margaret Almon
Pebble Mosaic Stepping Stones by Margaret Almon.
Big Pebble Spiral Stepping Stone by Margaret Almon.
Big Pebble Spiral Stepping Stone by Margaret Almon.

What was a first step that you took toward learning by going where I have to go?

 

I’ll leave you with Kurt Elling’s lovely jazz interpretation of Roethke’s poem.

Marian McPartland: Expatriate Extraordinaire! Piano Jazz and Joy

Marian McPartland - piano
Marian McPartland – piano – via Tom Marcello on Flickr.

I’ve been thinking a lot about expatriates.  My sister is getting ready to be one for the second time,  moving to South Africa.  2010 was 25 years since we moved from Canada to the United States.  One expatriate who has inspired me is jazz pianist Marian McPartland.  I came across her NPR interview show, Piano Jazz, by chance on the radio.  I was just beginning to realize how much I wanted to make art, but I wasn’t familiar with doing things I actually enjoyed.  I felt somehow that if I liked something, that meant it was irrelevant.  What struck me about Marian McPartland was how much she enjoyed playing the piano, talking to her guests, listening to their playing, then playing with them in that wonderful conversation that comes when you are truly listening to someone and responding.

Marian(her real name was Margaret!) grew up in England, was passionate about music, heard jazz on the radio, joined a piano quartet and toured entertaining the troops during WWII with the USO, and met American jazz musician Jimmy McPartland, got married, and moved to Chicago with him after the war.  She moved to New York and led a trio at the Hickory House for 8 years, and became a jazz composer.  Eventually she started her own record label, Halcyon, because she believed jazz musicians were treated as second class citizens by record companies. This was 1969, and highly unusual for a woman to up and start her own label.

In 1978 she began her interview program Piano Jazz, and over 30 years later she has created an incredible oral history of some of the greatest jazz musicians in addition to classical and popular artists such as Norah Jones, Elvis Costello and Alicia Keys.   At 90 she played at her own all-star jazz birthday party!  I am awed by her journey from British classical music student to American jazz icon.  Be sure to listen to her voice.  She doesn’t sing, but her voice is melodious, with a mixture of British and American accent all her own.  She is gracious as a host, but isn’t afraid to swing the pieces she plays.  Her guests rise to the occasion of playing with her.

Listening to Marian every week for an hour, I began to appreciate the energy that comes from doing what you love, from being true to your vision, from delighting in life.  I played flute in Junior High band, and took classical flute lessons, but never caught the spark of the music, the flow.  But I can hear it, and appreciate it, and be inspired by it.

Here she is accompanying Norah Jones on September in the rain:

And here she is being interviewed by Billy Taylor:

 

Nutmeg Designs Mosaic Meets Icelandic Jazz with Sunna Gunnlaugs: Creativity Across the Globe

Sunna GunnlaugsIt’s amazing the connections we can make online.  Stratoz, the stained glass half of Nutmeg Designs, helms the Nutmeg Designs Twitter account and usually includes a good dose of jazz in his tweets.  By good fortune he found Icelandic Jazz Pianist Sunna Gunnlaugs, who makes fabulously beautiful music, along with her husband Scott McLemore, drummer, composer and designer.

We found great pleasure in listening to Sunna’s music, and when she said she was coming on a mini-US tour, with a stop at Trumpets Jazz Club in Montclair, NJ, we jumped at the chance to see her.  It’s a bit of a drive from where we are but so much closer than coming to Iceland!

Sunna let me know on twitter that she loved my mosaic pendants and to please bring some, and I laid out an array of colors, and was so excited that she chose a dusty blue one with abalone shell for herself and two others as gifts.    She put it on right away and wore it while playing a wonderful evening of jazz.  What an honor to become part of people’s lives!  When I create mosaics, I often feel like I’m improvising, letting the materials lead me in the present moment.  I start with a basic idea or theme, and work off of that, seeing what unfolds.

Over at Stratoz’s Blog:

Jazz on Tuesdays–Sunna’s Dream Suncatcher

Mosaic Pendant in Green and Bronze by Margaret Almon